Wireless telephones, such as mobile/cellular telephones, cordless telephones, and other consumer audio devices, such as mp3 players, are in widespread use. Performance of such devices with respect to intelligibility can be improved by providing noise canceling using a microphone to measure ambient acoustic events and then using signal processing to insert an anti-noise signal into the output of the device to cancel the ambient acoustic events.
Because the acoustic environment around personal audio devices, such as wireless telephones, can change dramatically, depending on the sources of noise that are present, the position of the device itself, and a mode of operation of the audio device (e.g., phone call, listening to music, in a noisy environment with no source audio content, as an earplug, as a hearing aid, etc.), it is desirable to adapt the noise canceling to take into account such environmental changes.